An important contribution to Evangelical thought.
A radical reinterpretation of the Bible and the core of mainstream Evangelical theology.
At the heart of Evangelical thought today is its view about the final coming of Jesus. The generally accepted interpretation of it is known as “dispensationalism,” which states that Jesus will return to judge man for his sins sometime in the imminent future. Debut author Gulbrandsen, though, takes issue with dispensationalist arithmetic, asserting that the Bible unambiguously states that Jesus will appear a generation after the restoration of Israel. If the creation of the modern state of Israel counts as that restoration, he says, and a generation is approximately 40 years long, then the Second Coming should have happened around 1988. As it clearly didn’t, the author says that a new timeline, culled from a fresh reading of the Bible, is necessary. To that end, he says that Jesus’ death and resurrection ushered in a new covenant, and that his austere judgment was already delivered in 70 A.D. The implication of this new chronology is significant: in it, Satan has already been defeated, and the “Anti-Christ” discussed in the Bible, actually the Roman Emperor Nero, has come and gone. The final coming has yet to transpire, the author asserts, and it isn’t designed as a judgment of sin, but as a reward to believers. Gulbrandsen argues that his revision of dispensationalism liberates Christianity from the gloomy expectation of impending doom; the end of days, he says, is something for believers to enthusiastically look forward to. Also, he says, Christians have every reason to expect faith itself to expand across the globe: “A few years from now, most of Christianity will be catching on. A generation from now, dispensationalism will only be a few chapters in the church history books.” Gulbrandsen’s argument is a provocative one, and it’s hard not to be impressed by both his marriage of hopefulness and eschatology, as well as his willingness to challenge received orthodoxy. He articulates his exegetical positions with considerable care, if sometimes with a touch of bombast. The author is an Evangelical addressing other Evangelicals, and this theological tract likely won’t appeal beyond that particular crowd. For those within it, though, this book provides valuable fodder for serious consideration.
An important contribution to Evangelical thought.Pub Date: July 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4602-9112-2
Page Count: -
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An extraordinary true tale of torment, retribution, and loyalty that's irresistibly readable in spite of its intrusively melodramatic prose. Starting out with calculated, movie-ready anecdotes about his boyhood gang, Carcaterra's memoir takes a hairpin turn into horror and then changes tack once more to relate grippingly what must be one of the most outrageous confidence schemes ever perpetrated. Growing up in New York's Hell's Kitchen in the 1960s, former New York Daily News reporter Carcaterra (A Safe Place, 1993) had three close friends with whom he played stickball, bedeviled nuns, and ran errands for the neighborhood Mob boss. All this is recalled through a dripping mist of nostalgia; the streetcorner banter is as stilted and coy as a late Bowery Boys film. But a third of the way in, the story suddenly takes off: In 1967 the four friends seriously injured a man when they more or less unintentionally rolled a hot-dog cart down the steps of a subway entrance. The boys, aged 11 to 14, were packed off to an upstate New York reformatory so brutal it makes Sing Sing sound like Sunnybrook Farm. The guards continually raped and beat them, at one point tossing all of them into solitary confinement, where rats gnawed at their wounds and the menu consisted of oatmeal soaked in urine. Two of Carcaterra's friends were dehumanized by their year upstate, eventually becoming prominent gangsters. In 1980, they happened upon the former guard who had been their principal torturer and shot him dead. The book's stunning denouement concerns the successful plot devised by the author and his third friend, now a Manhattan assistant DA, to free the two killers and to exact revenge against the remaining ex-guards who had scarred their lives so irrevocably. Carcaterra has run a moral and emotional gauntlet, and the resulting book, despite its flaws, is disturbing and hard to forget. (Film rights to Propaganda; author tour)
Pub Date: July 10, 1995
ISBN: 0-345-39606-5
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The memoir of George Dawson, who learned to read when he was 98, places his life in the context of the entire 20th century in this inspiring, yet ultimately blighted, biography. Dawson begins his story with an emotional bang: his account of witnessing the lynching of a young African-American man falsely accused of rape. America’s racial caste system and his illiteracy emerge as the two biggest obstacles in Dawson’s life, but a full view of the man overcoming the obstacles remains oddly hidden. Travels to Ohio, Canada, and Mexico reveal little beyond Dawson’s restlessness, since nothing much happens to him during these wanderings. Similarly, the diverse activities he finds himself engaging in—bootlegging in St. Louis, breaking horses, attending cockfights—never really advance the reader’s understanding of the man. He calls himself a “ladies’ man” and hints at a score of exciting stories, but then describes only his decorous marriage. Despite the personal nature of this memoir, Dawson remains a strangely aloof figure, never quite inviting the reader to enter his world. In contrast to Dawson’s diffidence, however, Glaubman’s overbearing presence, as he repeatedly parades himself out to converse with Dawson, stifles any momentum the memoir might develop. Almost every chapter begins with Glaubman presenting Dawson with a newspaper clipping or historical fact and asking him to comment on it, despite the fact that Dawson often does not remember or never knew about the event in question. Exasperated readers may wonder whether Dawson’s life and his accomplishments, his passion for learning despite daunting obstacles, is the tale at hand, or whether the real issue is his recollections of Archduke Ferdinand. Dawson’s achievements are impressive and potentially exalting, but the gee-whiz nature of the tale degrades it to the status of yet another bowl of chicken soup for the soul, with a narrative frame as clunky as an old bone.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-50396-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1999
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